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Small pelagic fishes are used for human consumption, fishmeal and fish oil. They constitute 25% of global fish catch and have been of considerable conservation concern because of their intermediate position in aquatic food webs, often being a dominant dietary component of marine predators. This paper provides an overview of trends in abundance and fishing pressure on small pelagic fish stocks from single‐species scientific assessments that constitute 60% of global small pelagic catch. While most individual stocks have exhibited wide variability in abundance (typical of small pelagics compared with other fish taxa), across stocks there has been remarkable stability in average fishing pressure and biomass since 1970. On average, since 1970, the biomass of assessed small pelagic stocks is estimated to have been slightly above the biomass that would produce maximum sustainable yield, but estimation of this quantity for highly fluctuating stocks is quite uncertain. There were significant differences among assessed regions, with the Mediterranean and Black Sea of greatest concern for high and growing fishing pressure. The 40% of global small pelagic fish catch not covered by single‐species quantitative stock assessments since 1970 comes largely from Asia, where catches have continued to increase. At regional levels, the average abundance of assessed small pelagic fish is largely unrelated to average fishing pressure, which we argue results both from the portfolio effect, where numerous stocks fluctuate with little correlation in abundance, and from the short life span of small pelagics coupled with recruitment largely independent of spawning abundance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marine fish stocks are an important part of the world food system and are particularly important for many of the poorest people of the world. Most existing analyses suggest overfishing is increasing, and there is widespread concern that fish stocks are decreasing throughout most of the world. We assembled trends in abundance and harvest rate of stocks that are scientifically assessed, constituting half of the reported globalmarine fish catch. For these stocks, on average, abundance is increasing and is at proposed target levels. Compared with regions that are intensively managed, regions with less-developed fisheries management have, on average, 3-fold greater harvest rates and half the abundance as assessed stocks. Available evidence suggests that the regions without assessments of abundance have little fisheries management, and stocks are in poor shape. Increased application of area-appropriate fisheries science recommendations and management tools are still needed for sustaining fisheries in places where they are lacking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Common Fisheries Policy, all commercial fish stocks in the Mediterranean and Black Sea should be managed at MSY by 2015–2020. However, currently 95% of assessed stocks are overexploited and 73% of demersal species are not assessed. To explore the risk of overexploitation to un-assessed stocks, vulnerability scores were constructed using Productivity Susceptibility Analysis (PSA) for 151 Mediterranean demersal fish species. Out of 151 species, 58 displayed low vulnerability, 20 medium vulnerability, 25 high vulnerability and 48 were considered of major concern. More than half of stocks showed a risk of being overfished (termed “vulnerability”), greater than that of the stocks currently assessed in the Mediterranean Sea. Most of the cartilagineous fish fell into the high and major concern areas. The quality of data used for the PSA was scored and these scores could be used to improve future collection of data. Vulnerability scores are well correlated with IUCN red list classification. To rank the priority of commercial stocks still to be assessed, vulnerability scores were scaled with landings and mean price per stock. Eight of the top fifteen ranking stocks are currently not assessed. When the vulnerability of cartilaginous fish was tested against rate of decline estimated from trawl survey time-series, no strong correlation was found. The exploitation ratio ( F / F msy ) of assessed stocks was regressed, using generalized mixed models, against PSA scores and area and a significant relationship was found. Using this result, assessed stocks were used as a training set to predict the exploitation of un-assessed stocks. F / F msy was predicted for 151 species in 14 management areas (GSAs). The results over all areas is that 39 species-area combinations are exploited sustainably, all occurring in area 20 (Greece), while the remaining 2075 are exploited unsustainably with respect to F msy ( F / F msy > 1). This prediction model, albeit after further refinement with more data and testing, could be used to predict exploitation ratio when no information on stock status is available. We predict that ≈98% of the unassessed demersal fish species are potentially overexploited in the evaluated areas. This makes it clear that strong management action will be required to achieve the targets of the Common Fisheries Policy in the next 1–5 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]